WILLIAM Harty, the unarmed motorist who was shot several times by a police corporal during Friday’s traffic jam on the Old Harbour main road in St Catherine, was yesterday still in hospital.

He received four bullet wounds to his shoulder, neck, and on one of his fingers. A bullet was still lodged in his shoulder yesterday.

“I cannot lift the arm. I’m now laid up and can’t work,” he told the Observer at the Spanish Town Hospital.

Harty, 55, was one of hundreds of motorists caught in the traffic jam caused by an accident at McCook’s Pen on the Old Harbour main road.

Three persons – Cleon Folkes, Curlisa Knight and Teneil Salmon – died in the crash when the Toyota Corolla taxi in which they were passengers slammed into a truck transporting gasolene. The driver, the police said, was overtaking a line of vehicles when the accident occurred.

The accident caused a traffic snarl on both sides of the highway for several hours.

Harty, who was on his way from Clarendon, where he works, to his home in Spanish Town, got caught in the traffic jam at Bushy Park, near Old Harbour.

“On the 5:00 pm news on RJR I learned of the accident which was the reason for the traffic jam,” he told the Observer yesterday. “The traffic was at a standstill and some vehicles were turning around. Other vehicles – minibuses, vans and cars – were travelling on the soft shoulder in an effort to get out.”

Harty said that one of two women who had asked him for a lift disembarked from his car after she became impatient with the slow pace of the line of traffic.

“I was behind a truck carrying some cows. The smell from the truck was unpleasant, so I decided to join the vehicles on the soft shoulder. There were four or five vehicles in front of my Nissan Bluebird,” he explained.

Harty said that after driving a short distance on the soft shoulder, a man in civilian clothes, who later turned out to be a policeman, walked out and stood in front of his car and said, “Everybody is waiting, why you can’t wait”.

Harty said that the policeman came to the side of his car and in the darkness showed him “what looked like an identification card”. The policeman, who had asked someone in a car in the line of traffic to pass his pouch, became distracted, at which point Harty moved from the soft shoulder back into a space he had noticed in the line of traffic.

“The man came and stood in front of my car and said ‘you nuh hear me say you to stand up over there so because I going give you a ticket’. He then went into his waist and pulled a gun and fired four shots through the windscreen of my Nissan Bluebird, which hit me on my shoulder, neck and finger,” the injured man said.

He told the Observer that after he was shot, he drove his car from the line of traffic back on to the soft shoulder. He said that when he asked the policeman what he had done and why he had shot him, his reply was ‘you nuh see you drive down the car on me to kill me’.

“I replied, ‘how could I have driven the car down on you when there is a traffic jam and there is no space?’ On realising that I was covered with blood and that my shoulder and neck were burning me, I started bawling ‘murder’ and ‘help’. He went into his car and took out a vest marked police and put it on. When he put on the vest, I said ‘officer, you really look at an ageable man like me and shoot me? What I do?’,” Harty said.

He said the corporal then told him to get into his jeep “mek me carry you go a Spanish Town Hospital”.

“He did not have on a siren, so he blew his horn, flashed the lights of the vehicle and some of the time he also had to drive on the same soft shoulder to get me to the hospital,” Harty said.

The Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) liaison officer in Spanish Town, one Corporal Manhertz, told the Observer that the policeman’s version of the incident, according to the station diary, was that on Friday at 6:00 pm he was a passenger in a vehicle travelling along the Old Harbour main road in the traffic jam. The traffic came to a standstill and he came out of the vehicle and stood on the soft shoulder to try and see what was happening.

While on the soft shoulder, he saw a Nissan Bluebird, licensed 0457 BQ, driven by William Harty, coming toward him on the soft shoulder. The vehicle stopped at his foot. He inquired of him why he had not stayed in the line of traffic like everybody else.

The corporal, the CCN spokesman said, identified himself and instructed Hardy to rejoin the line and wait. “Harty attempted to drive the vehicle down on him and he fired two shots, one of which caught Harty on his left upper shoulder,” he said.

The Bureau of Special Investigation has started an investigation into the incident.